Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is the rightful owner of both the Samajwadi Party and its election symbol, the ‘Cycle.’ In a major setback to Mulayam Singh Yadav and his advisers, the three-member Election Commission headed by Chief Election Commissioner Dr Nasim Zaidi on Monday ruled that the group led by Akhilesh is the SP and is entitled to use its name and the symbol ‘Cycle’.
The EC order is a major boost to the electoral prospects of Akhilesh, who is now set to seal a poll pact with the Congress and the RlD to take on the BJP and the BSP. The scenes of celebrations in lucknow clearly showed that the SP cadre and leaders have both “numerically” and “emotionally” thrown their weight behind the Chief Minister.
After the verdict, Akhilesh has also emerged as a strong leader in public perception since he has shown that he was the real boss, and not Shivpal Yadav.
The 42-page verdict came a day ahead of the start of the filing of nominations in the seven-phased polls in the State beginning on February 11.The EC announced the order after it heard the two sides on Friday. It also came within a fortnight of Akhilesh being anointed the national president of the party.
“A mere look at the figures will evidently demonstrate that Akhilesh enjoys overwhelming majority support, both among the legislative and organisational wings of the party,” the order said.
The Akhilesh group led by Ram Gopal Yadav had submitted to the poll panel individual affidavits of legislative Assembly members, members of legislative Council, MPs, national executive members and national convention delegates and claimed the majority support among the members of the party. As per affidavits, out of 5,731 members, 4,716 supported the Akhilesh faction, while the Mulayam faction did not submit any concrete evident before the EC.
In all his replies, Mulayam only contended that there was no split in the party which needed “determination” of the Symbols Order. According to the EC, the rejoinder given by Mulayam was vague. “It appears that the deponents have been seemingly called upon to sign on the dotted lines. Moreover, most of such deponents are not well-versed in English, the affidavits allegedly given by them were in English and it has not been mentioned that the contents were read over to them in vernacular,” the order said.
“Except for the vague allegation, the Mulayam group despite repeated opportunities given to it, neither filed any affidavit from any member nor indicated even the name of one member whose affidavit was considered by him to be suspect or questioned the above members claimed by Ram Gopal Yadav either on January 13, 2017 at the time of hearing or at any time thereafter,” the panel said.
“At the hearing, the learned counsel for his group wanted to make a mountain out of a molehill by referring to the typographical mistake of the word ‘help’ instead of the word ‘held’ in some of the affidavits filed by the other group. But he had no answer when a more glaring mistake was pointed out to him by the counsel of the other group in the letter dated January 3, 2017 of Amar Singh where he had stated in the concluding para that, ‘I refute my point on the illegibility of January 1, 2017 convention of Samajwadi Party and unconstitutionality of the resolution passed thereby,’” the order said.
The commission said that those affidavits do not contain averment that they have been sworn by the deponents without any fear, favour or influence which is essential in such situations.
The bitter tussle for control over the party, fought for months, came to a head after Akhilesh refused to accept several candidates chosen by his father and uncle Shivpal for the UP elections and released his own list of candidates. Team Akhilesh had told the poll panel that the Chief Minister had the support of a majority of party leaders and workers and was now party president and so must be allotted the ‘Cycle’ symbol. As plan B they had decided to ask for the motorcycle symbol.